Remembrance of Comics Past: Amazing Spider-Man #181

As someone who started reading Amazing Spider-Man comic books 296 issues (and 25 years) after they debuted, I’ve always come to understand Peter Parker/Spidey’s origin story in a roundabout way. Given some of the expected changes on the horizon after ASM #700 is released in a few days, I’d like to spend a few “remembrance” posts looking at those significant origin issues in my life.

In my write-up for ASM #698, I jokingly referred to the pre-twist story as the comic book equivalent of a television bottle episode – when budget-strapped creative teams stick to minimal or frequently used set pieces, and lean heavily on previously-filmed footage to piece together a show. NBC’s Community, naturally, sent up the entire bottle episode art form during its second season with “Cooperative Calligraphy,” but that’s not to say that all of these types of episodes are guaranteed bad television. But most of them are.

ASM #181 is undoubtedly a bottle episode in comic book form – a total rehash of the Spider-Man origin story set to the backdrop that it’s the anniversary of the death of Peter’s Uncle Ben and he’s now visiting his grave and reflecting. There’s no new information in this comic book – no character development or insight into why past activities happened the way they did. It’s just Peter running through his rogues gallery, the loves of his life, and the significant of his Aunt and Uncle. I don’t know the back story of the genesis of this issue, though given the fact that it was early in Jim Shooter’s run as editor-in-chief, and given what a state of organizational disarray Marvel was in during the immediate moments preceding Shooter’s arrival, maybe this was the best the creative team could punch out in order to meet their monthly deadline.

With that said, it’s intriguing to look back at an issue like this and examine how my perspective has changed about the quality of the book. After just re-reading this for the umpteenth time in anticipation of this post, I can’t help but cringe at the overall laziness of the issue. It’s filled with a combination or large panels recreating historic moments in ASM history along with large blocks of text trying to cram as much information in as possible. The issue is essentially a Spider-Man handbook posing as a comic book. There’s a minor twist at the end – Peter places his old microscope at Ben’s grave and within minutes, someone working the nightshift at the Cemetery lifts the device to give to his own son as a birthday present. I guess that functions as another example of that terrible Parker luck, but the whole thing always struck me as a little callous (I think if I forgot my son’s birthday and the gift I got him was lifted from a graveyard that I would have some serious explaining to do to my wife).

And yet it was such a fantastic “get” for me when I was kid searching the back issue bins at my local comic book shop. I can’t imagine I paid a terrible sum for the comic, and I remember reading it religiously since it was the first “back issue” I ever owned that so thoroughly laid out the origin story and then the 180 issues that followed. This Spider-Man cliff notes comic is where I learned pretty much everything that seemed important to know as a Spider-Man fan who came to these comics so many years after the fact. In ASM #181 I learned (snippets) about folks like Gwen Stacy, Flash Thompson, Aunt May, Doctor Doom and the Punisher. If it wasn’t for this comic book, I probably would never have become interested in trying to acquire ASM #’s 33, 121 and 129 because I would have never understood their significance as part of a larger canon. And considering what a superfan of the series I went on to become, that makes this comic a very significant part of my collection.

Mark Ginocchio is a professional writer and editor living in Brooklyn, NY. He's been collecting Amazing Spider-Man comic books since the late-1980s and launched Chasing Amazing in 2011 as a way to tell his story about Spider-Man, comics, collecting and everything else in-between. You also find Mark's writing at Comics Should Be Good at Comic Book Resources, WhatCulture.com and Longbox Graveyard. Follow him on Twitter for comic book chat @ChasingASMBlog.

” I don’t know the back story of the genesis of this issue, though given the fact that it was early in Jim Shooter’s run as editor-in-chief, and given what a state of organizational disarray Marvel was in during the immediate moments preceding Shooter’s arrival, maybe this was the best the creative team could punch out in order to meet their monthly deadline.”

It’s a classic fill-in issue, by the fill-in kings of the day (Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema, also the-then contemporary Spectacular creative team) and was probably produced because of a gap between Len Wein’s departure and Marv Wolfman’s arrival. I guess either Wolfman was delayed or the production schedule made an error and left a gap/

Well, this is the first Spidey comic-book I ever read, since this was republished in the very first issue of the Hungarian edition of Spider-man. I believe almost every comic reader in my country has a strong attachment to this story.

I think we can agree that this episode is a great starting point for a reprint series. For issue 181 of an ongoing… I’m not so sure.

This issue was in my own big box of comics and when I say big box of comics we’re ot talking just ASM but the first 7 issues of Peter Parker, some Thor, Captain America, Avengers, X-Men a butt load of Fantastic Four and Hulk and some cool 1st issues of Spider-Woman, Ms Marvel, Star Wars and others. There must have been 50 books that belonged to my dad and when comic collecting became serious for me, he gave me his old issues. These were my first ever back issues. I don’t really count ASM 375 as one of them since that comic was still new when I got it but had been on shelves for a few months. This comic was one of them being that Spider-Man was my 2nd favorite hero at the time and the ASM was at the top of the stack, this was the first issue I read from that pile.

Although the issue is one big pile of trash coming into it as a long term fan, for those like us who had yet to experience Spidey’s origin and (at 1995-1996 when I got these,) we were still ways from Chapter One the first origin that seemed new and cool, this comic was a godsend. I think for that reason alone I liked reading it and talking to my friends of Spidey’s storied history, though they were more facinated at Demogoblin or Kraven’s Son than some too bit Blond Gwen. Sigh.

Others in that pile were ASM 167-171, 173-174, 178-181. Not a bad collection to start out with huh?